Process planning of cylindrical printing for a novel 2T2R-type rotary 3D printer and an initial feasibility investigation

Abstract

Due to solid freeform fabrication (SFF)’s manufacturing capability, additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing, is developing rapidly and has received much attention, leading to various aerospace, military and robotics applications. Slicing and path planning are two critical steps of AM, determining the manufactured part’s geometric accuracy and mechanical performance to a large extent. Many research works focus on the detailed strategies and algorithms of slicing and path planning. However, instead of 3D printing, most available studies concentrate only on 2.5D printing, where slicing and printing along the Z direction and filling 2D contours in the XY plane are applied. Although multi-direction and curved layer slicing have been proposed, little attention has been paid to path planning on the curved layers, especially tool path generation for the revolving parts requiring supports, such as screw conveyors and the propeller or fan. Hence, the primary purpose of this paper is to propose a novel cylindrical slicing strategy (a type of curved layer slicing) based on the triangle mesh model for curved layer Material Extrusion (CLMEX). It could be learned that the support structure is necessary for cases with traditional bottom-up printing, while supportless printing may be feasible with cylindrical slicing. Besides, a preliminary experiment is conducted to illustrate the proposed method and validate its feasibility based on a novel 2T2R-type rotary Material Extrusion (MEX) 3D printer designed in the authors’ previous research. This early-stage work generally intends to investigate the process planning and show the initial feasibility of cylindrical printing using a novel 2T2R-type rotary 3D printer. This research provides process designers with a novel and feasible slicing method for multi-axis 3D printers having a rotary build platform.